Chapter 52

(Note: Bold & Italic = modern demonic. Bold = ancient demonic. Bold & Underline = Pissed off Oretzi. Underline = wolf. Italics = demon talking in human language)

The night passed rather uneventfully - to everyone's collective relief - but now it was time to make their way back to Hi no Kuni. They were grateful that the merchant had enough with the Southern Continent. However, they were not grateful for the fact he did not want to cross the sea - apparently he had a form of seasickness that made Oretzi and Tamashii's seasickness look like child's play.

Oretzi didn't want to cross the continent for the only strip of land that connected the two continents - she didn't fancy evading hyenas, tigers, and kami-sama who knows what else. But if they had no choice then that's where they had to go.

But before they head that way she wanted to stock up on supplies…

"Tama-kun, Hoshi-chan, come with me," she tugs on their arms. "Tsukiko-chan, Haru-chan, come with us too." She looked at her partner and silently gestured for her to stay with her sensei and their client. The wolf demon nods slightly and sat down by Anko to keep her company while they stood guard outside the merchant's hotel room.

"Where are we going?" Tamashii asks worried.

"We," Oretzi drawls as she led them to the shrine, "are going to stock up on holy water and talismans."

Although she had two canteens of holy water and at least four stacks of ofudas she knew that she rather be safe than sorry. From the cursory questions she had asked - in the brief time she had before she heard Reo's roar - she knew that once used there was no reusing them. A single stack had at least fifteen ofudas she could use and though she didn't know much about the talismans she did know they were effective - the burns on her hands could testify to that fact.

"Isn't that a bit overkill?" Haruko asks, she remembered what the holy water had done to the hone-onna - hard to forget the screams and the steams coming off them before they, in essence, collapsed in on themselves.

"Nothing is overkill when it comes to defending yourself," Oretzi remarks, turning around so that she was walking backwards. "I can probably handle a fight with a few demons on my own. Tsuki, even if she has no experience fighting demons, would be able to hold her own. Reo grew up here and I don't know if you've noticed but he has scars all over his body as a result of his upbringing."

They each showed their own respective way of acknowledging what she was saying.

"What about us?" Hoshi asks, curious as to what Oretzi would say.

Haruko and Tsukiko look at each other before they shook their heads. They've had their fair share of encounters and knew their limitations.

"Well…" Oretzi stretches her arms up before locking them behind her head. "I can probably deal with the lower tier demons-."

"What would count as lower tiers though?" Tamashii interrupts.

"Uh…" Oretzi frowns as she tries to come up with an answer. "Think of it like our mission ranking systems," she finally comes up. "Genins get the D-ranks and occasionally the lower C-rank missions if the risks to them are low enough." Hoshi scoffs at that while Tamashii seemed to have rolled his eyes - it's hard to tell when he doesn't have pupils. The twins looked at the pair in askance but no one wanted to explain. "Chunins," she decides to move on even though she gave her teammates an amused look at their reactions, "get all kinds of C-ranks and the B-ranks."

"And the A and S ranks go to the jonins," Haruko interrupts.

"I think we all know this, Oretzi-chan," Tsukiko adds in.

Oretzi sighs as she mock glares at the twins. "Okay then. The nine Bijuu Lords, I would classify them as SS-rank."

"Whoa - hold on, there's no such rank!"

The hanyou shoots Tamashii an impatient look and he had the decency to look the tiniest bit ashamed for interrupting her.

"As I was saying," she shoots him another look, "the Bijuu Lords I would classify as SS-rank. It would take the unification of the five Great Shinobi village and then some to even come close to taking down one of them."

"But didn't the Yondaime Hokage defeat the Kyuubi?" Hoshi asks.

"The Kyuubi hadn't really been defeated," Oretzi mutters to herself, glancing off to the side.

"Wait, what?" Tamashii exclaims. "That's impossible! Our village gave everything to stop him and you're saying he's still out there?"

"He's not really 'out there', Tamashii," Oretzi comments in a low voice. "Before that day he was sealed away, had been since Konoha's beginning."

Haruko and Tsukiko - not really from Konoha - looked at the trio in confusion while Tsuki watched the group.

"What?" Tamashii mutters.

Oretzi sighed in frustration, realizing that she wasn't clarifying things at all. "You remember Nii Yugito, right?" she looks at her teammates who nods their head. "Okay, do you remember anyone who reminds you of her - or even Sabaku no Gaara?"

"Uh… you mean the power they give off?" Hoshi asked hesitantly. Cause she really couldn't think of anyone that reminded her of the two Jinchuuriki they've met so far.

"Something like that," Oretzi grumbles. "But I'm talking about the living situations for the Jinchuuriki."

"Um… they were ostracized by their villages… used as weapons," Hoshi listed.

Tamashii frowned as something started clicking into place for him. The Kyuubi that had nearly destroyed the village had not actually been defeated like it was believed. And there was no chance that Oretzi would just randomly bring up the topic of Jinchuurikis unless she had a reason. So that would mean that Konoha had its own Jinchuuriki - he had no doubt in his mind that whoever this Jinchuuriki is, they would probably face the same situation that Gaara and Yugito has faced.

The only person that comes to mind is Naruto - one of the few kids Oretzi's age that she's fiercely protective of.

"Wait," Tamashii muttered, thinking. "Isn't there a boy?" he turned towards Hoshi.

"What you mean?" Hoshi asked while Oretzi took a step back, incidentally stepping between the Mitarashi twins who had been quiet up to that point.

"I mean, Oretzi's class, before she graduated early, had a boy. I don't really know much about the class itself but I remember that there was a boy who was shaping up to be the class clown."

"What are they talking about?" Haruko muttered to the hanyou.

"I think they're talking about Naruto-chan," Oretzi remarks, tilting her head slightly.

"Um… why?" Tsukiko questioned.

"Well, Naruto's a…" Oretzi trailed off, not sure if she's supposed to be talking about it or not.

"Jinchuuriki," Tamashii finished for her.

"Wait, what?" Hoshi frowned at the Hyuuga boy. "How do you even get there?"

"It makes sense! Naruto's situation is similar to Gaara and even Yugito - granted I don't think I ever felt something off about his chakra."

"That's cause the Kyuubi's youki is inaccessible to him," Oretzi injects. "That and I don't think he's aware that he's a Jinchuuriki."

"A Jinchuuriki is unaware he's a Jinchuuriki?" the twins remarked in perfect union. "That can't be right."

"That's how it is," Oretzi shook her head. "From what I can figure out, Gaara and Yugito's seals on their Bijuu are weak - they're so weak that the Bijuu are able to have access to their hosts. Give them chakra or take over if needed." The hanyou tilts her head slightly. "Naruto, on the other hand - I can only speculate that his seal on the Kyuubi must be extremely well done. Possibly meant to keep him ignorant of the power that lies within."

"But, don't everyone in the village hate him?" Haruko asked, recalling the boy in question now.

"Yes," the hanyou sighed in annoyance. "They believe that the Kyuubi hasn't truly been defeated by the Hokage and that he took on the shape of a child to escape death," she adds, putting together what she has observed from the earlier days, before she had became an official shinobi.

"So, wait," Hoshi muttered, narrowing her eyes slightly, "Does that mean that the village has been using him as a scapegoat?" Oretzi's lack of response to that question was more telling than anything else. "But, that's - he's just a kid!"

"Try telling the village that," the hanyou sighed before looking up at the shrine they had been searching for. She really did not want to enter another shrine for as long as she lived but she knew that their safety and survival would increased tenfold if they had these holy relics with them.

"What were we talking about originally?" Tsukiko wondered out loud.

"…" Everyone looked at each other before they had a sheepish look on their respective faces.

"We were talking about demons," Hoshi recalled.

"We got off topic when we tried to classify how the demons would be categorized though," Tamashii pointed out.

"There's no easy way to categorize the demons. The older they are the harder it is to defeat them," Oretzi points out, with the twins nodding in agreement. "Not to mention there's also the fact that within each species of demons there's a hierarchy."

"This is going to get complicated real fast isn't it?" Tamashii remarked drily.

"You guys asked," Oretzi huffed.

"I'm starting to think we should wait until another time for this conversation," Hoshi suggested.

"Perhaps when we're not in the middle of a demon infested war zone," Haruko agreed.

"I wouldn't actually called it demon infested," Oretzi huffed as she entered the shrine's holy space, shuddering as she felt her youki and the holy energy begin to clash. "For all you know you could be the ones infesting the area."

"Are you actually bringing up a 'who was here first'?" Tamashii questioned, his eyebrow arched as he looked at the hanyou.

"Demons have actually been around for centuries," was the wolf hanyou's only remark before she went to get the ofudas, leaving the others to go and get canteens of the holy water.

~Kazama~

By the time everyone had regrouped, with their supplies, Oretzi's hands were reddened and it was clear, from the expression on her face, that her pain tolerance was starting to get a bit overwhelmed by the purifying energies in the shrine.

So without any further ado they left the space, the hanyou quickly handing over the relics over to the nearest person - who so happened to be Hoshi - and rubbed the palms of her hands against her clothes. "I can't ever get used to that," she griped, shaking and wriggling her fingers as if to dispel the tingles.

"How often are we going to need to do this?" Tamashii wondered.

"Probably as long as we're here in the Southern Continent," one of the Mitarashi twins remarked. "If this place truly is an Akumanosu, we're going to want every advantage we can possibly get."

"I didn't even think the water from the shrines would actually work," Haruko comments, thinking back to the time when she and her sister were traveling by themselves. Had they known about it they would have used holy water in the occasional fights they had.

"I don't think most of the shrines in the Northern Continents have the same properties as the ones here," Oretzi pipes up. "I haven't actually entered any there but I know that there's a lake somewhere here that is fed by an underground reservoir," the hanyou comments. "From what little I know about it, the reservoir is rumored to be the birthing grounds for the…" she struggled for a moment to think of an appropriate term. "I suppose they're gods, or gods' messengers."

A disturbed look appeared on the teenagers' faces as Oretzi's words connected in their minds, prompting those who were carrying canteens to try and hold them as far away as possible.

"So, demons are what, allergic?" Tamashii asked as he tried to hold the strap of the canteen with just his finger.

"I suppose you could consider it like that," Oretzi shrugs her shoulders. "Either way, having these with us would ensure that we'd be safe. So long we actually remember to restock on them every once awhile. Once a day might be enough, twice if we end up encountering demons."

"What are you thinking," Hoshi narrowed her eyes at the youngest member of the team.

"Well, if we're headed out west," the hanyou mutters, "It might be easier to just cut through the no man lands. If we moved quickly we might be able to avoid a lot of conflict."

"No man lands?" the teenagers questioned as one.

"Um… territories claimed by extremely hostile - will eat the flesh of men if given the chance - demons?"

"And you want us to go through them?!"

"It was just a suggestion," the hanyou muttered meekly. "We'd be out here for weeks if we try to go around all the territories that are in the west…"

"The fact that we're in dangerous territory isn't enough?" Tamashii groaned, "You want to lead us into even worse territories?"

Oretzi growls at the Hyuuga boy before huffing. "It was only a suggestion," she snaps. "The longer we stay here the more likely we were going to run into trouble."

"What makes you think that running through hostile territory, with a client who probably will be carrying along goods or at least be in a carriage, is a good idea?" Tsukiko injects before Tamashii could retort.

"The fact that I'm a hanyou who knows that there are at least twenty species of demons who are interested in eating me?"

The teenagers all looked at the hanyou, dumbfounded by what she just said, while the girl in question just turned and started walking - all but leaving the others to gawk at her.

"I keep forgetting about that," Hoshi muttered, looking at the others.

"It's not like it's something we encounter every day in our travels," Tamashii sighed.

"What I'm interested in is why did Oretzi accept this job, knowing that the Southern Continent is an Akumanosu and a hazard to her life," Haruko chirps, bringing the two chunins attention to this matter.

Now that it was brought up the teenagers did have to wonder about Oretzi's decisions.

"Wait, didn't Anko-sensei accept the job before informing us?" Hoshi reminded the others. "It's possible that it didn't occur to Oretzi to mention the possible danger to her life."

"I don't think any of us could possibly know what's going on through Oretzi's mind," Tsukiko comments. "Sometimes I'm not even sure she knows."

"Oi!" they heard Oretzi shout at them from up ahead. "Hurry up you slowpokes!"

~Kazama~

Oretzi yawned and stretched her arms, glancing around at her surroundings. They were still in the village, waiting for their client to finish up his last minutes things before they head out for the west.

None of the others had mentioned the idea of going through the no man lands to their sensei so she figured that they're likely to be taking the long way around. So she had to consider the various villages that they should stop at overnight - or during the day if they had to restock their supplies. She wasn't really looking forward to the trip west but she knew that if they had any hope of getting back to Konoha without crossing the seas that they'd have to find their ways around the various demon territories.

Having Reo around was a godsend for the hanyou - not only did she now have info she didn't before but she also now knew which territories to avoid completely. She had only the vaguest idea before meeting up with him - she remembered the Alpha saying that the territories change as often as a river's course and knew that that her knowledge from when she was younger could have been seriously outdated.

She wasn't wrong about that - some of the clans that used to inhabit the areas close to the Luna Wolves have actually moved onto new areas away from the wolves' borders. The more hostile clans had gone west - to the no man lands from the sound of it - and a few of the pacifist clans had retreated to their respective dimensions.

Reo had mentioned that the Human-Demon hostilities have actually increased in the recent years. One of the reasons, according to the lion, was due to a captured youngling. Though how a human actually got their hands on a youngling was something she wasn't sure about.

Even at its infancy it should have been guarded fiercely by its clan - that a youngling could be lured away was something she couldn't completely understand with the limited information she had about the whole thing. But she did understand one thing - depending on the circumstances surrounding the death of the youngling - there was a possible war brewing in the west. She just hopes that they can get through the area before the war breaks out.

She frowns to herself as she picked up the map again, muttering in ancient demon as she tried to figure out the best possible routes through the various territories. It was the most recent map of the human settlements and the various geographical markers, with Reo's rough sketches of the demon clans' territories drawn on.

"Hey, what you reading?" she hears Hoshi's voice before she feels the weight of the teenager's head on her shoulder. "Oh, a map?"

"Yeah… trying to figure out what's the best routes," she confessed, having traced a possible path until it reached a dead-end near a mountain range. To go along the mountains was to risk entering more than a few territories that she thought was too dangerous for the team and the client.

"Wow, looks like the demons are overtaking the human settlements," Hoshi muttered, her eyes taking in the various shaded regions that represented the claimed lands.

"You forget, this whole area is an Akumanosu."

"You never did explain why it's like that here."

Oretzi's ears twitch slightly, alerting Hoshi to the fact that the hanyou had heard her comment despite her silence afterwards. "There's no easy explanation," was her only response after almost five minutes.

"Is it a 'I don't want to explain' or 'I don't know how to explain it'?"

"Can it be both?"

"It would sound too much like a cop out if you did," Hoshi remarks.

"Geez, thanks," the hanyou mock grumbles at her teammate, earning a giggle from the shorter girl. "I'll try and explain when everyone is gathered," she finally decides.

"For reals this time?"

"When did I ever say I would?"

"I don't know," Hoshi shrugged her shoulders. "We all have questions about why you call the Southern Continent Akumanosu, why you didn't mention any of this to us before we left Konoha. And there's the recent thing with the demon hierarchy you mentioned."

"I have a whole lot of explaining to do," Oretzi huffed.

"Yup, that would be the understatement of the year."

Oretzi sighed in annoyance before she folds up the map, deciding that obsessing over a route would do no one good. "Do you know where everyone is?"

"I think Anko-sensei is still guarding the client. But everyone else should be in the hotel."

"Tsuki, is she with Anko-sensei or in the hotel?"

"You lost track of her again?"

Oretzi huffed at the other girl. "You'd think that I would keep better track of her," the hanyou shook her head, peering at their surroundings. "I think she likes Anko-sensei more than me."

"You did say that Tsuki-chan likes Anko-sensei's scent, right?"

"It's not just Tsuki-chan that likes Anko-sensei's scent," Oretzi reminded the heiress.

Hoshi shook her head, acknowledging what the wolf hanyou is saying. "Well, I think our best bet would be that she'd be with Anko-sensei."

Oretzi shot her an amused look, "You're finally learning." She got a backhanded smack to her shoulder for the remark.

"Anyone who knows you and Tsuki-chan would know that if she's not with you she'd be with sensei."

"You're just tired of losing money to me," the hanyou teased, ducking an attempt to punch her. "If I remember right you've lost over nine thousand ryō to me already." (1)

"Nani, has it really been that much?" Hoshi shook her head in disbelief. She knew that they had a tendency of betting against the hanyou but she hadn't realized that she lost that much to the girl.

"Mhm," the hanyou hummed as she started walking for the hotel. "Tama-kun has the most loss at twenty-five thousand ryō," she comments. (2)

"What was it that he bet?" Hoshi asked as she followed the hanyou.

"Uh… Well, everyone made different bets with me but I think it had something to do with how much Naruto and I could eat. He thought I couldn't beat Naruto's record in ramen eating."

Hoshi started laughing, remembering that particular moment. Oretzi wasn't exactly a big fan of ramen - considering that it wasn't quite as filling as meat - but for Tamashii to bet that she couldn't bet Naruto's record? That hadn't been smart of the Hyuuga boy.

Not only did she beat Naruto's record but the ramen stand, Ichiraku, probably would have gone out of business due to the amount of food consumed by the blonde and the hanyou. If it wasn't for the fact that the owner was paid handsomely by the team - and their sensei - he probably would have banned Oretzi from ever eating there again.

Although, Hoshi did remember that Oretzi refused to eat there again - citing that she had enough ramen to last her a lifetime.

"Hey, Oretzi-chan, how about we treat Naruto to Ichiraku ramen when we get back?" Hoshi ventured - wondering if the hanyou had changed her mind about ramen yet.

"Nope!" the hanyou declared almost instantly. "We're taking Naru-chan to Akimichi's restaurant!"

"He's going to complain the entire time," Hoshi remarked as they finally see the hotel. Almost instantly they were beset by Reo - the large white haired male sweeping up the hanyou in a bear hug.

"Nani, let go!" the younger girl whined as she wiggled, laughing when the lion demon started to tickle her. Hoshi quickly got out of the way before the two could start rough housing - the others joining them rather quickly once they heard the commotion from inside the hotel.

"What started this?" Haruko asked while Tamashii was standing near the two friends - looking torn between stopping them and placing bets. Tsukiko was sitting on the roof of the hotel, keeping a look out for demons as a precaution.

"Them being friends I suppose," was Hoshi's only answer.

"Tsuki and Oretzi-chan don't do this though," Haruko observed.

"I don't think Tsuki ever felt like she could," Hoshi comments. "Or maybe it's because Oretzi-chan is so focused on being a shinobi that she forgets that she's a pup."

"How old is Tsuki now anyway?"

"That's a good question," Tamashii chirps as he sat down next to them - having given up the idea of stopping the roughhousing happening between Reo and Oretzi. "I don't think Tsuki looked more than two months old."

"She was rather small," Hoshi agreed, recalling the day when the large white wolf had shown up with a pup and a scroll for Oretzi. "It's hard to believe that almost two years has gone by since then."

"We were only teammates for three months by that point," Tamashii recalled. "Believe it or not but Oretzi had a hard time controlling her youki back then," he tells Haruko. "She used to run straight through a tree's trunk if she wasn't careful."

"That was hilarious back then," Hoshi giggled, remembering the various times the hanyou would pout and whine at them if they started to tease her about her chakra.

"She's gotten better about that," Haruko comments, watching the pair down below struggle to pin each other.

Every time Reo appeared to have the upper hand Oretzi would flip him right off of her and the struggle would continue. Despite his larger size and weight Oretzi seemed to be his equal in terms of strength.

"That's only because she used to seal away part of her powers," Tamashii comments, recalling the various seals that had been applied to the hanyou by the Third Hokage. It had made him nervous when he saw the blocks in her chakra system - some of them looked like they were barely adequate for the job. "Honestly, she still complains about her chakra fluctuating but I think they've actually slowed in their frequency."

"It used to be every day," Hoshi clarified before Haruko could ask her question. "Now I think it's every other week."

"So she's still growing?"

"She is ten years old," the Akino heiress remarks, "I think she'll continue to grow for another five years. If not eight."

"Ten…" Haruko shook her head in disbelief. "Ten years old and already killing."

"She's been killing since she was nine," Tamashii remarks. "Of course, she took a while to bounce back from her first kill."

"We all did," Hoshi reminded him.

"She didn't leave the Inuzuka compound for a week," he retorts.

"So?"

Tamashii had nothing in response to that.

"Ha!" they heard from down below, prompting everyone to look and see that Oretzi had succeeded in pinning the lion demon down, her arms and legs tangled up with his in a full nelson. Though how a 5'6" wolf hanyou, weighting at 106.7 lbs., was able to beat a 5'11" lion demon who possibly weighted at 160 lbs.?

"That was low," they can barely hear Reo grumble as the hanyou released her hold on him, sitting on his back with a happy smirk. Even though their clothes were completely covered in dirt.

"All's fair!" the hanyou chirps happily.

"Are you two done yet?!" Haruko yells down towards them, getting laughs from the hanyou before Reo picks himself off, trying in vain to dust off his clothes. Causing Oretzi to tumble off of him and earning a few whines of protest from the girl.

"Oi, Jaakuna, you promised that you'd tell us!" Hoshi reminded the hanyou.

"Hai, hai," the girl yawns as she picked herself up, dusting off her clothes to the best of her ability. "Why don't we have this conversation inside the room," she suggested before entering the hotel without waiting for any input from the others.

Her teammates could tell, almost from the way she spoke, that she was being serious about this - that or she really didn't want to talk about it but was willing to for their stakes. Haruko and Tsukiko glanced at the other two teenagers - looking at them in askance when they realized that Oretzi had felt a bit off in her suggestion.

~Kazama~

(1) 9000 ryō = 90,000 yen = 9,000 USD (roughly)

(2) 25,000 ryō = 250,000 yen = 25,000 USD (roughly)

Hi everyone, I hope you're enjoying the story so far. My apologies for the irregular updates - I'm doing my best to stay on top on the updates. Anyway, please leave a review and lemme know whatcha think.

Ja ne and have a good day!